Marc Brüseke

A brief but possibly overwritten account of the things I do, how I do them, and why doing them requires an explanation in the first place.

Academic research

The term ‘practice-led research’ has the kind of bureaucratic sterility that makes it sound like something developed by a committee—some mid-level university board deciding that, yes, creativity is an acceptable mode of inquiry, but only if it is sufficiently footnoted and backed by dense theoretical frameworks. What this actually means, in plain English, is that I am a researcher who thinks through making. My work explores life writing, fragmented narratives, and visual culture—primarily through a method I call photo-sketching,¹ which involves taking disconnected moments, layering them side by side, and trusting that meaning will emerge in the gaps. If this sounds suspiciously like how memory works, that is not an accident.

My PhD² is an extended experiment in this exact approach, exploring the way experimental memoirs disrupt linear storytelling by embracing fragmentation as both a form and a philosophy. Because, as it turns out, when you start pulling at the threads of autobiography, migration, and cultural memory, you realise that most of the stories we tell about ourselves—whether personal, national, or historical—are not so much chronological narratives as they are aesthetic arrangements of selective remembering. The project pulls from literature, sociology, and media studies.

Talks on creative nonfiction & media

I have delivered academic talks and presentations on storytelling, creative nonfiction, and interdisciplinary research, often circling around the same fundamental question: what happens when you stop expecting stories to behave? These lectures deal with fragmented narratives, media theory, visual culture, and identity formation. They are really about how we make sense of the world through broken, nonlinear, and sometimes contradictory pieces of information—which, if you think about it, is also the fundamental condition of being alive in a digital, hyper-mediated world.

Selected presentations

• How I started my own boutique publishing operation.
  York St. John University, April 2023.
  A reflection on the creative and academic intersections of independent publishing, drawing from my experience founding Analog Submission Press and the joys/ terrors of resisting mainstream literary homogenisation.
• Writing a hybrid memoir.
  York St. John University, December 2022.
  An argument for autofiction as a survival mechanism in a world where personal and collective histories bleed into one another.
• Notes on the fragment: A fragmentary approach to life writing.
  York St. John University, April 2022.
  A defence of fragmentation as not only a valid but an essential narrative form and a polite rebuttal to anyone still clinging to the idea that stories need clear beginnings, middles, and ends.
• States of drift: applying Guy Debord’s dérive to life writing.
  York St. John University, March 2022.
  An exploration of psychogeography, memory, and how wandering a city can turn into an act of autobiography, even if—or especially if—you don’t know where you are going.
• Photography and life writing.
  York St. John University, October 2021.
  An exploration of how private photography and fragmented narratives intersect, proving that family photo albums are secretly a form of unreliable memoir.

Creative nonfiction writing

Much of my writing explores identity, memory, and cultural displacement, shaped by my upbringing in South Africa during apartheid’s final years and my later experiences of migration and travel. My work is heavily influenced by autofiction, by the idea that stories of the self are necessarily entangled with the stories of others, and by the fact that linearity is overrated.

Beyond my literary writing, I publish media and cultural analysis essays, where I interrogate film, literature, and digital culture with a level of obsessive attention.

Current book projects

• A South African Childhood (working title)
  A memoir in fragments, examining family, postcolonial identity, and cultural memory, because sometimes the best way to tell a story is to take it apart first.
• Notes from the Road (working title)
  A travel memoir, except instead of glorified tourism, it is about dislocation, self-exploration, and the search for belonging across Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China, Southeast Asia, and India.

Teaching experience

I am an educator and university lecturer specialising in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Media Studies. My teaching philosophy is based on the idea that critical thinking should not be confined to academia and that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools for understanding the world. University courses I have taught include:

English Literature & Creative Writing

• Forms of Narrative
  How storytelling mechanics work across novels, poetry, drama, and film.
• Introduction to Literary Studies
  A foundation in literary analysis, engaging with historical, theoretical, and contemporary perspectives.
• Personal Development Sessions
  Where students realise that academic writing and creative writing are not as different as they thought.

Media Studies

• Research in Practice
  Develops critical thinking, media research methodologies, and interdisciplinary analysis.
• Mediated Identities
  How media constructs race, gender, class, and cultural narratives in ways that often go unnoticed.
• Life Online
  An exploration of digital spaces, participatory culture, and how the internet is shaping identity faster than we can study it.

Creative & academic projects

Founded in 2017, Analog Submission Press is a guerrilla publisher inspired by DIY punk ethics, created to amplify bold, original, and often transgressive voices in literature. The press specialises in handcrafted, limited-run publications printed on recycled paper, individually trimmed and folded, and absolutely resistant to the homogenisation of mainstream publishing. Since its founding, the press has published over 160 titles, demonstrating that there is still room for literary risk-taking as long as you are willing to do it yourself.